


kingdom's sun

by haechansheaven



Series: come up [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exes, Friends With Benefits, Graduation, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan-centric, M/M, Marijuana, Parties, Post-Graduation, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/haechansheaven
Summary: Donghyuck smooths down his rough edges and presses a smile onto his lips and slides his way into the cracks of others, coaxing them to bed with him.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno
Series: come up [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719973
Comments: 11
Kudos: 73





	kingdom's sun

**Author's Note:**

> part 3/4 of the come up series... the last fic will be from jeno's perspective! and then this whole series will finally be wrapped up! thanks for being patient, and sorry if this one does not feel as put-together as it could have been... but i wanted to give donghyuck an opportunity to tell his side of this story, even if it does not feel satisfying, and may even be frustrating.

“What is it like to watch the person you love want to fuck everyone but you?”

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow. Picks at the lint on the end of his sleeve and snorts. “Who said he doesn’t want to fuck me?”

“Yeah, but,” Jaemin points a manicured finger in Donghyuck’s general direction, accusatory, “it’s not the kinda fuck you want.”

“That’s a technicality.” Donghyuck grits his teeth because it is. That’s all it is—a fucking technicality. Or he’s convinced himself of as much. For now, that’s enough. “That’s all it is. A technicality.”

The glitter on Donghyuck’s nails—reds and greens and yellows and purples and every single fucking color under the sun as Jaemin tries his latest haul out on his hands because Donghyuck is a good fucking friend like that—shimmers in the shitty apartment light and he debates smearing his nails on his jeans. He debates streaking the fabric with barely-dry polish, chunks of glitter and color in irregular lines. Donghyuck doesn’t want to have this conversation and fucking up his nails—pissing Jaemin off—is a way to run away from it.

They’ve spoken about this more times than Donghyuck can count on both his hands. It’s tossed between them like talking about the weather, or what Jaemin had for breakfast, or the last person Donghyuck fucked. There’s a casualness to it that churns in Donghyuck’s blood and makes him sick to his fucking stomach. He wants to plug his ears with his fingers and scream until Jaemin drops it.

It’s too late for that, though. It’s become a regularity. Donghyuck being in love with a man who he fruitlessly chases after is as normal as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

“I just worry about you, Hyuck,” murmurs Jaemin, reaching out for the top coat. “It’s quick dry. You’ll be out of here in no time. Promise.”

“I don’t care.” The pads of Donghyuck’s fingers knock against the table with an irregular rhythm anyways—a physical manifestation of the impatience that he has, even when he tries to reign it in for the sake of those that he loves. “Really. I promise.”

Jaemin’s laugh is easy-going. Gentle, with no sharp edges, though there’s a mischievousness to his gaze that acts in contrary. “We’re all pretty fucked up, Donghyuck. There’s a line that you cross, and you can never get back from, when you fuck your friends. Even if you convince everyone that you can.” He gestures between them before pointing to a closed door down the hallway where music blares through the cheap wood. “Mark and I still navigate that every day.”

“You fell in love after it was all said and done,” Donghyuck murmurs, blinking against the light Jaemin takes his hand. “That’s different. It’s different. All of us are different.”

“Yes, well,” Jaemin pats the back of Donghyuck’s hand in weak consolation, “that’s just the reality of all of this, isn’t it? And you’re not exactly innocent, either. You go around and coax men and women between your legs just as often, if not more. You’re the one who reminded Jeno that you don’t have to love the person you fuck, right? You just have to want it.”

There’s a history between all of them. It’s messy and tangled and Donghyuck thinks that Jaemin is right. There’s no going back from the mess they’ve made. This is the world that they occupy now. The eight of them are irreversibly tied to one another in ways that they still can’t fully comprehend. Donghyuck doesn’t think they ever will, not that it’s particularly important that they do. Part of it is his doing—he was overconfident and reckless; careless with the hearts that he held in his hands. He dropped them; bruised them and broke off pieces that none of them will ever get back. Donghyuck never realized, in the mess, that he had lost a piece of himself.

He knows that now. Donghyuck smooths down his rough edges and presses a smile onto his lips and slides his way into the cracks of others, coaxing them to bed with him. It’s not to fill any sort of emptiness. He finds confidence and enjoyment and pleasure in his conquests, much as he assumes that Jeno must, as well.

When they met one another, they were young and dumb and unformed. Malleable and susceptible to the impressions left behind by the world that stepped on them. In a way, they ruined one another, only to build themselves back up. Digging up pieces from the earth and gently placing them back together with a tenderness and delicateness that Donghyuck can only attribute to love.

Jaemin asks him that day what it’s like to watch the person you love want to fuck everyone but you.

Donghyuck wants to tell him that it fucking sucks. Instead he smiles pretty and watches the way the fluorescent light catches on chunks of glitter glued to his nails. He’s twenty-one and things don’t seem that bad.

He wants to approach it with nonchalance. Donghyuck can see the way Jeno’s eyes light up in the shitty house party. There’s a joint between his lips and a strength to his shoulders that he hasn’t seen in months. This trip is good for them—it’ll be good for them, Donghyuck tells himself, catching himself as his fingers trail down Jeno’s neck to his shoulders. It earns him a cursory glance, a bright smile, and heartache.

Donghyuck shoves it away with a long inhale, smoke filtering from his lips as Jeno watches him with an unfocused gaze. He wonders if his gaze lingers on his lips as long as Donghyuck’s does on Jeno’s. The wonder in Jeno’s eyes don’t last long, though, attention diverted from Donghyuck’s presence as Doyoung walks by. And Donghyuck can’t blame him. Doyoung is a good fuck, though difficult to convince into bed. He’s control and finesse and something else boiling underneath.

“Do you think,” Jeno shouts over the music, “I can convince Doyoung to fuck me?”

Patting Jeno’s cheek, Donghyuck smiles. “You got this, Jen.”

They’re stuck at one another’s side that night, crowding strangers on unfamiliar couches and benches, sticking their hands into cold pool water and pretending that they can see the stars in a light-polluted suburb. He ends that night with Jeno on his lap, lips pressed to his neck, high as fuck on the couch, laughing about absolutely fucking nothing. The party is still thriving around them as they’re carted away, waking up in a fucked-up mess too early the next morning.

That’s how it goes every night until it doesn’t, and Donghyuck is shoving his tongue down a woman’s throat for another joint and Jeno is fucked up to high hell, eyes wide as a giggle tumbles from his lips and to the ground. He leaves Donghyuck’s side, just for a moment, and Donghyuck tells himself that it’s fine, that everything is under control, that Jeno is not as far away as he thinks.

The night that Doyoung fucks Jeno, Donghyuck coerces a man with a pretty smile and a loud laugh to his knees. It’s a distraction—a pair of lips wet around his cock as he comes down the stranger’s throat. His name is Ten, and it’s not the first time Donghyuck has seen him, and he’s sure that it won’t be the last. Head thrown back, he reciprocates the favor before stumbling from the bedroom with a smile, fingers curling around the blunt that someone hands him as he takes a seat on the sofa.

Things move fast, and yet not fast enough. It takes longer than he wants to be back in the safety of Johnny’s apartment, fingers tangled with Jeno’s as they fall asleep among fits of laughter and a welcoming sort of excitement for the next morning, even if they subconsciously know that it’s going to be a fucking shitshow.

Sometimes Donghyuck can convince himself that Jeno still loves him back and that things aren’t broken. Quiet moments shoved into bathrooms, choking on the smell of hair dye and laughing as he hits his head on the faucet. This week has been a testament to how wrong Donghyuck had been about life—about everything.

About _Jeno_.

There’s a fragility to the way they dance among one another and Donghyuck wonders how he’s still smiling when he fights with Johnny—tells his brother to fuck Jeno or miss out. Because wouldn’t Donghyuck know, and isn’t Doyoung a testament now, how good a fuck Jeno is? That Jeno will get what he wants, regardless of what Johnny convinces himself of? And it’s fucked up. It’s all so fucking fucked up that Donghyuck considers cracking; wrinkling his edges, no longer pulling himself so thin and sharp.

Their last night in the city, he fucks a man named Kun in an apartment two doors down from the party whose dimples make Donghyuck think he should fall in love with someone else. But that’s the fucking thing—Donghyuck can’t fall in love with anyone else when his heart isn’t even his own anymore. There’s Donghyuck and then there’s _Donghyuck_ , and they’re the same person, but they’re not, and sometimes even he gets lost in the person he’s created.

They are tangled and weaved together, and where one Donghyuck ends, the other begins. The definition is lost the longer they exist in the same space, and he is unsure of how exactly he’s supposed to fix himself back up from this fucked up duality. Nothing really makes sense anymore, not that it did to begin with. He doesn’t know how to ground himself as he turns himself on his head on purpose. Irreversible, permanent change. Donghyuck has, in a way, broken himself before anyone else could.

The next morning, Jeno buys him the food he wants and Donghyuck can pretend that this whole fucking week didn’t happen if he closes his eyes and lets Jeno’s laugh consume him.

“Are the breakfast burritos that good?” Jeno asks, reaching for Donghyuck’s plate.

He slaps Jeno’s hand away, brow furrowed. “Yes. Eat your own.”

In these moments, fissures and fragments and breaks do not exist. It is Donghyuck and Jeno, and that is all that matters.

He doesn’t know where Jeno is, though it doesn’t matter. He isn’t Jeno’s keeper. There’s no reason for him to think about it. Instead of allowing it to fester, Donghyuck tunes the sirens out of his head and finds himself at Renjun’s doorstep. The porch creaks under his feet and Donghyuck shudders. There’s a breeze, the spring warmth yet to reach them, and Donghyuck can’t find his footing.

Renjun looks surprised to see him; eyes roam down his neck to his wrists that twist around themselves before the door is opening, the silence of a normally lively home feeling so painfully out of place. In a few months this will be a faraway place and Donghyuck will forget that this home even exists. He’ll forget the hole in the wall from when Chenle got too drunk to stand on his own two feet; he’ll forget the time they climbed onto the roof and the neighbor called the cops.

The memories will be wisps because Donghyuck has always been like something of a child with some lack of object permanence. A physical entity is what chains his mind to the ground. Donghyuck wonders if that is part of the reason that he’s so reluctant to let Jeno go; that Jeno is an anchor for hundreds of thousands of memories that he has made, and letting go of Jeno is letting go of them. Of everyone. Of every _thing_.

It’s too meta, though, so instead of thinking about it more, Donghyuck squeezes his body between the sofa and the wall, Renjun cornering him in with the coffee table. There’s a soda—Mountain Dew Baja Blast, he acknowledges with a scrunched-up nose—and a sandwich placed on the table in front of him after brewing in silence. Renjun stares down at him from the couch, content not to say anything.

There is another Renjun and another Donghyuck that feeds off the energy of those around them, and then there are the Renjun and Donghyuck of this moment, content to sit in silence. They’re good for one another in that sort of way, never pushing or pulling at one another’s edges too much. Just as there is no such thing as a one-dimensional person, friendships are never lacking in facets. Donghyuck can turn their time together every which way and point out the different kinds of Renjun he knows. He can do this for everyone, really, but Renjun is the easiest to smooth out.

The distinction between each Renjun that he knows is sharp and defined—a clear transition between two states. It’s easy. Donghyuck likes easy, no matter how deeply entrenched in winding mazes he tends to be.

“Why are you here?” Renjun asks. His voice is soft, like he’s afraid of scaring Donghyuck away. So, in return, Donghyuck laughs. “Hyuck.”

“I can’t just stop by to see you?”

“It’s not that you can’t,” murmurs Renjun, sitting back, “it’s that you usually don’t. Or, not alone, anyways. What’s going on in that big, big head of yours?”

“Fuck you,” Donghyuck bites. “You have a big head, too.”

“I meant _metaphorically_ , you _ass_ ,” Renjun reaches out and pushes Donghyuck’s head away, “Don’t get your fucking panties in a twist.”

“Nothing,” he opens the soda, “is wrong.”

It’s a lie. They both know it. Renjun raises an eyebrow, presses his lips together, and pretends like he believes Donghyuck for the sake of peace. That’s how they are, though; they work hard to preserve the precarious stalemate between them. Once upon a time, they were constantly at one another’s throat. They’re too alike in that sort of way—only one of them can exist in a space at any given time without intervention.

He eats in silence; watches whatever show it is that Renjun puts on the television screen, the rapid-fire Chinese soaring over his head. Donghyuck laughs when Renjun laughs, sandwich a pitiful, squished mess between his fingers as he allows the world to continue to move around him. This is how everything has been going lately. Even school can’t hold his attention more than the bare minimum.

The way they all came together—all came to be—is a little fucked up in the college sort of way. Fucking around, fucking each other. Falling into bed with the people they were closest to. They’ve made it this far, though Donghyuck isn’t sure how much farther they’ll get. It’s something of a ticking time bomb in the way they precariously stand on a tight rope and wait for someone else to fall so they can let go.

“Is it Jeno?”

“When is it not about Jeno?” whispers Donghyuck. “It’s always about Jeno. It’s _always_ Jeno. The closer we get to the end, the more I think that I hate seeing him with other men.”

Renjun scoffs in a small sort of way. It holds contempt, but also some sort of careful sympathy. He toes the line between them and pushes it further into Donghyuck’s territory. “It’s hard not to feel that way about the person you love, Donghyuck. It makes sense.” The front door opens and closes, footsteps pausing at the doorway before disappearing down a hallway. “It’s just Yangyang.”

“I don’t care,” Donghyuck knows he sounds bitter, “Everyone knows.”

“Have you thought about what it’s like to not be in love?”

Donghyuck scrunches his nose; tries to balance the can of soda on its side. “Why would I want to?”

“I’unno,” Renjun reaches out to smooth Donghyuck’s hair down, “Just wondering if you’re hurting.”

To say that he’s hurting would be an understatement. Donghyuck is slowly, but surely, falling into fucking pieces. The same sort of pieces that people told him he would be torn into when he and Jeno called it quits. Back then, he had laughed in their faces; waved them off and told everyone that he and Jeno are better than that. That he and Jeno are _stronger_ than that. Donghyuck was, as he can be, wrong.

“Maybe.” Donghyuck watches the empty can topple onto its side. A drop of soda lands on the table. “I’m still figuring that one out.”

Jeno shoves his laptop onto Donghyuck’s bed before burying his body under the blankets. “Good morning,” he sings.

Groaning, Donghyuck slams the laptop shut before pulling the covers over his face. He has no idea what time it is—all he knows is that it’s too fucking early to humor whatever the hell Jeno is up to. His best friend is persistent, though, jabbing him in the side. “Fuck _off_ ,” he groans, pushing him away. “I’m trying to fucking _sleep_.”

“I’m not the one who told you to go and drink without me last night,” mutters Jeno, opening his laptop up again. Donghyuck knows this from the furious whirring sounds that the ancient laptop makes. “Plus, we need to look for places to stay for the summer! There are, like, two months before we need to move out of this shithole, Hyuck.”

“Before _you_ do.” Donghyuck pulls the blanket away, blinking blearily in response to Jeno’s confusion. “I took a position on campus with the library reserves for the summer. So, I’m gonna extend the lease.”

“Oh.” He falls silent before closing his laptop again. It’s deposited on the floor, Jeno instead choosing to make himself comfortable on the bed. If Donghyuck had his wits about him, he would kick Jeno out. But he doesn’t. Instead, he lets Jeno wrap his arms around Donghyuck’s middle before falling back asleep.

It’s hours before they both awaken in tandem; Donghyuck first, Jeno second. That’s the natural order to things, really, and Donghyuck smooths down his own hair as Jeno stares up at him, half-asleep body curling back around Donghyuck’s waist. His bedside clock reads 1:22 PM, and Donghyuck debates the merits of simply going back to sleep. Jeno is already falling back into it, breathing becoming even until Donghyuck is ripping off the covers and clambering out of bed.

“Put on pants,” Jeno calls sleepily from bed.

“Why?” mutters Donghyuck, hand on the doorknob.

Around a yawn, Jeno replies, “Jisung came over last night and slept on the couch. I don’t think you noticed him. Jaemin tossed you onto your bed.”

“Fuck, did I drink that much?” hisses Donghyuck, ruffling his own hair. He’s not really sure at what point last night fell out of control. It was _supposed_ to be a simple sort of celebration for Donghyuck handing in his honors English thesis. The semester, for him, is finished. “I don’t even remember. Fuck.”

“You don’t even remember standing in my doorway naked?” Jeno jokes, head leaning on his hand. “Because that was pretty funny. You gave me your clothes for _safe keeping_ before walking back to your room.”

Forehead colliding with the door, Donghyuck groans. “I hate drunk me.”

Jeno slaps him on the ass before leaving the room. “Get dressed, your highness, and I’ll cook breakfast,” he calls through the door. Donghyuck can faintly hear Jeno yelling at Jisung to wake up and help.

Donghyuck has probably ten minutes before Jeno burns something and sets off the fire alarm, effectively pissing off the entirety of their apartment building. The impending threat is the only thing that gets Donghyuck moving, scrambling for _anything_ before throwing open the door and shouting for both of them to vacate the fucking kitchen before they get evicted.

And cooking is something therapeutic for Donghyuck. It is something that’s effectively both freeing and ordered. There are limits set in place, but also wiggle room for Donghyuck to experiment and do as he pleases. He thinks that there’s probably some sort of metaphor or psychological analysis that someone could make about that, but he doesn’t really fucking care. He just likes cooking. There’s a base, and there’s things he can change.

“What’re you making?” Jisung calls from the doorway. His chin digs into the flesh of Donghyuck’s shoulder as he wraps his arms around his waist. “Pancakes? Waffles?”

“I’m trying to salvage the absolute fucking disaster that you two made,” replies Donghyuck, turning to look over his shoulder as Jeno pulls Jisung away. “What the fuck were you even trying to make?”

Jeno sniffs before he takes Jisung’s place, arms tight. “Pancakes…,” he mutters, shuffling along as Donghyuck moves around the kitchen.

“Jen, you gotta let go. I can’t cook like this.” When Jeno makes no move to let go, Donghyuck takes the time to pry his best friend’s hands off from around him. It takes more effort than he’s willing to allocate to it, but he continues because a hungry Jisung is worse than being absolutely fucking exhausted. And it’s not like it’s _his_ fault that Jeno is a fucking gym head and he prefers the extra few hours of sleep. “Go entertain Jisung.”

“But I haven’t seen you in _forever_ ,” Jeno mutters, pouting. “You’re always hanging out at Jaemin and Mark’s lately. It’s almost like you don’t even live here.”

Donghyuck hopes that Jeno doesn’t see his grimace. He’s never been particularly good at lying to Jeno about most things, and he knows that he’d be honest—that he would tell Jeno that he’s been running away. This is what he does, though. It’s something of a cycle. When his love gets to be too much, Donghyuck runs away from it until it settles. Something like the rising tide.

And being with Jaemin and Mark isn’t really running away from things. It’s more along the lines of talking things through. Bits and pieces of nail polish still dot his fingernails, stray pieces of glitter catching the sunlight that streams in through the window. It’s the only natural light in the entirety of their apartment. A small fucking window that teases what the outside has to offer. In many ways, Donghyuck feels trapped.

In many ways, Donghyuck feels free.

“Well, we’re all gone from here in a few months, aren’t we?” asks Donghyuck, refusing to look up. “Mark and Jaemin are moving across the country. They’ll be closer to Johnny and Doyoung than to me.”

“Than to us,” Jeno corrects, arms crossed.

Scoffing, Donghyuck tests a small pancake on the griddle, nose wrinkling as it barely rises. More flour it is. “Jeno, do you even know what you’re going to do after graduation?”

“Do I have to?” Accusatory, he shakes his head. “You don’t.”

“I do,” Donghyuck admits, hesitant. “I got an email the other day. I’m off the waitlist at Columbia. Kinda shitty timing since I just accepted my summer job at the library, but it’s better than a rejection.”

“Oh.” Jeno sounds small and Donghyuck hates it. “There’s no rush, though, is there?”

Donghyuck laughs, shaking his head. “You know there’s never a rush to figure shit out. My brother’s job is lifestyle vlogging, Jen. You’ve got time.”

Jeno’s arms around his waist are grounding. Donghyuck doesn’t think he deserves Jeno, but he, in some ways, though not all and definitely not the ways he wants, has him anyways. “Yeah. You’re right.”

The world spins a little faster when Donghyuck wants things to slow down. He wants more time before graduation, and now it’s only two weeks away. It’s the natural progression of things, probably. What Donghyuck wants, the world will never give him and so he settles for what he can procure. Coaxing people between his legs and stealing their hearts will never mean anything when Donghyuck isn’t loved by the person who holds his heart. And it’s stupid, because Donghyuck doesn’t think he’s nurturing a broken heart or anything.

Jeno loves him. Just not in the way Donghyuck wants. He wants to hold Jeno’s heart in the same sort of way Jeno holds his. Once upon a time Donghyuck thought that Jeno would. But Donghyuck has always known what he wanted and Jeno never has, and when it came to an end, Donghyuck wasn’t surprised. Expectations never mean that things won’t hurt, though. Donghyuck can predict every single thing that will ever go wrong in his life, and they will all still hurt, anyways.

The crumbling of their love was an inevitability, and Donghyuck has no one to blame but himself. He has been there, he has done that, and there is nothing else left for Donghyuck to experience but love. Donghyuck, for all his shit and all his stupidity, wants the dream—the white picket fence and the house with the red door, and the green, green grass that his neighbors will eye with envy. He wants to be in love, own a dog, have kids running around the house.

Donghyuck fucks around because what he wants, he cannot have, at least with the man he envisions them with, and therefore there is no tether to those pictures in his mind. Until it is no longer Jeno’s face that wakes up beside him in the morning, Donghyuck will be stuck in a perpetual emotional hell with an inability to even conceptualize an escape. He is in love with Jeno and needs to learn to fall out of it.

Jisung, across from him, leans his head on his hand. Donghyuck isn’t sure if it’s pity, or affection, in his gaze. He doesn’t really care to figure it out. “I like you, you know,” Jisung says, simple. Brows furrowing, Donghyuck opens his mouth to speak. “But you look at me as a younger brother. And you look at Jeno like he’s Atlas or something, holding up the sky. I don’t know—I took one Classics course and changed my major.”

A broken sort of laugh tumbles from Donghyuck’s mouth as he sits back in disbelief. Jisung is pure and prudent and everything that Donghyuck wishes he could’ve been in university. Instead, he fell apart at the seams and never bothered to stitch himself back up. “I’m sorry I can’t return your feelings.”

“It’s fine—don’t look at me like that. I’m being _really_ fucking serious right now, Hyuck.” Jisung grins, easy-going, fry waving through the air as he speaks. “Like, I’m gonna get over you eventually. Might even happen as soon as I go home for the summer. It’s not that deep. It’s not…”

“It’s not like what I feel for Jeno.”

“And I wonder,” rambles Jisung, gaze serious, “if I fell for you because you’re such a romantic. Like, you showed me what it means to sacrifice a _whole_ lot for the person you love. But now I’m just kinda seeing that you’re hurting yourself, and you’re gonna keep doing that until Jeno isn’t in your life anymore. And I don’t think you really wanna let him go. You love him a _whole_ lot, but you’re really just hurting yourself.”

Blinking, Donghyuck stabs one of Jisung’s fries, metal dragging across the ceramic plate. He’s transparent. Donghyuck _knows_ this. Everyone and their fucking brother know that Donghyuck is in love with Jeno. It’s sort of like the way the moon dances around the Earth. There’s a time, and a moment, and a place, where Donghyuck thinks that the love Jeno offers is him enough. He knows, deep down, that it isn’t.

Jeno probably knows, if he’s being honest with himself. He probably knows that Donghyuck is in love with him. Jeno knows that Donghyuck would turn the world inside out for him if he asked. Something about that is unfair, and something about it is tragic, and Donghyuck hates both of them while admitting that they work.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling breathless. “I know.”

Jisung laughs, big and bright. He’s something of a beacon in the shitty storm that is made up of all of Donghyuck’s fucked up worries. All his friends are, though Jisung brings and openness and innocence to his life that he thought he long ago lost. “You don’t wanna talk about this, so let’s talk about something else. Are you excited to graduate?”

The speed at which conversations move with Jisung will always give Donghyuck figurative whiplash. He asks the waiter for a box before answering. Donghyuck isn’t hungry anymore. “Yeah. Got the next few years planned out and everything.”

“You’re moving to New York, aren’t you?” Chewing on a fry, he nods. “Chenle has a friend—his name is Lucas, or Xuxi, or, like, maybe it’s Yukhei, but I’m not really sure—who needs a roommate. He’s getting his PhD in, like, biochemical engineering at Columbia. Super cool dude. Chenle doesn’t know how to ask you if you want his number or not, so I figured I would let you know.”

A fry is still speared on his fork as the waiter takes his things, only to return with a box full of his food. When he peers inside, there are no fries with holes—no indication of his half-assed attempt of eating a fry existing in the same space as everything else that is whole. Of all fucking things for Donghyuck to take as a sign, he chooses this one. Maybe it’s a mistake.

“Oh,” Donghyuck smiles, “I’ll have to ask him for this guy’s number, then.”

Jeno looks at him, head tilted to the side. It’s all valid, though, the confusion painted across his face. If Donghyuck is being honest, he isn’t sure what’s going on in his own mind at the moment. There’s a conversation ready to begin, and Donghyuck doesn’t want it. It begins, anyways, as all things do. Everything that Donghyuck doesn’t want will always come to fruition. Perhaps if he no longer wants Jeno, he will have him.

“Renjun told me that you found a roommate in the city already,” Jeno says, hesitant. It shouldn’t feel like a loaded question, but it does. There’s a lot there that Donghyuck chooses to ignore. “A friend of Chenle’s?”

“A friend of a friend, actually,” corrects Donghyuck, nose wrinkling. There was a lot of exaggeration in Chenle’s statement of them being old friends. Yukhei had laughed nice and loud when Donghyuck mentioned Chenle. “He seems nice, though. We spoke on the phone and video called the other day. Makes my life a _whole_ lot easier.”

“Oh.”

Donghyuck thinks that they’ve all been saying that a lot lately. _Oh_. They all mean different things, and it’s fascinating that a simple sound could convey so much. He doesn’t know what Jeno’s _oh_ means, though it’s not his business to figure it out. If anything, it would be easier for him if Jeno was just honest. Instead he skirts around things—avoids Donghyuck when he asks if he knows anyone who would want to room with him for the summer—and doesn’t let Donghyuck in.

It’s frustrating.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck places a smile onto his face that he knows looks natural, mischievous, cynical, “and he’s pretty hot. So it looks like at _least_ the first few months should be fun.”

“Oh.”

“ _Anyways_ ,” he pushes the conversation away from his impending move and shifts it to where he wants it, “have you found anyone who’d want to live here for the summer? Like, a summer research student who doesn’t want to live on campus or something?”

“I’m staying the summer,” replies Jeno. “So you don’t need to find anyone else. Or, I mean, I don’t need to.”

Donghyuck croaks out a laugh. “You’re fucking hilarious. I’m serious, Jen. I need to know _now_. I’ve been doing fucking backflips for our landlord to hold this apartment.”

“And _I’m_ being serious. I’m staying for the summer, too. I’ve got a job at the fitness center for the summer.” Jeno looks at him with a severity that Donghyuck hasn’t seen since they broke up. It churns something ugly in his stomach, so he looks away. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life, so it doesn’t really hurt to prolong the wait a little more. Plus, you’re going to be far away soon. It’ll be nice to live together a little longer, don’t you think?”

No, Donghyuck thinks, it won’t. A summer with Jeno will simply add up to months that he’ll spend wondering why he can’t fall out of love. And Donghyuck has tried so fucking hard to fall out of love with Jeno. He’s offered his heart to others, let them proverbially break it, and still emerged largely unscathed. If anything, everyone around him has suffered as Donghyuck searches for a way to move forward. They’re collateral damage, though the unnecessary sort.

And he wants to tell Jeno no. Donghyuck wants to tell Jeno to pack his shit up and go home for the summer. Forget whatever the fuck happened for the last four years and move on with his life so Donghyuck can move on himself. But he is weak to Jeno Lee, and instead he smiles—throws his head back in a laugh he knows is convincing—and nods.

“Yeah, I think it will,” Donghyuck says, smoothing his hands down his thighs. “You’re heading home after?”

“I’m not sure,” Jeno pushes his plate away from himself, staring at Donghyuck. “I’ve started looking for jobs. We’ll see where I end up. Hopefully I get an interview or something and don’t have to go back home. But who knows?”

“Where are you looking?” Donghyuck pauses, shaking his head. “Or, I guess, what’re you looking for? I can help find job adverts for you.”

A hand waves around in the air as Jeno shrugs. It’s a non-verbal _not sure_ that Donghyuck takes at face value like he’s learned to do with Jeno. If he doesn’t take things at face-value with Jeno, he’ll start to analyze it and break it into unnecessary components and drop himself into a mental pitfall. Donghyuck can’t really afford to do that, especially now.

Between them, there’s a steadily growing distance, and Donghyuck isn’t sure if he’s glad. For the first time in the last four fucking years he’s getting what he wanted, and now he’s faltering. Where the space came from—where the silence was born—Donghyuck doesn’t know. One day, it began to stretch itself until Donghyuck no longer felt like his hand reaching across the kitchen table could touch Jeno.

They graduate like this: steeped in silence and a distance that feels uncomfortable; stretches their skin while pushing them away. Donghyuck knows that whatever will come after this will hurt. It will hurt so _fucking_ bad, and he’ll have to live with the fallout on his own in a new city with a new roommate and surrounded by millions of strangers.

Before that, though, there are three months that Donghyuck must live through, alternating between pulling Jeno close and pushing him away. It’s a battle between his heart and his mind in that sort of clichéd way, and Donghyuck wishes that he could give Jeno up while also keeping him in his life. That isn’t how things work, though.

Donghyuck decides, cider warming between his hands as he sits at the dinner table with his and Jeno’s families, that he will let Jeno go in August. Until then, he’ll hold him close and forgo the distance that has appeared between them. Donghyuck knows that this will simply make everything hurt more. Maybe he wants that, though. Maybe he wants everything to hurt so fucking badly that there’s no going back.

Under the table, beside him, Jeno taps his thigh—a quiet request for Donghyuck’s hand which he gives into without hesitation.

Graduation isn’t for him. It isn’t for the students who bake under the sun after years of tearing themselves down and stripping themselves bare. Students who have challenged everything they knew. Even those that didn’t. None of this ceremony is for them. Donghyuck closes his eyes, feels a bead of sweat roll down his back, and wonders why the fuck he’s here.

He doesn’t have to be. His parents aren’t waiting for him by the sidelines. They’re in their offices, the only recognition he received coming from haphazard, _Congratulations, sorry we can’t be there_ , text messages and, _We deposited money in your account as a graduation gift,_ follow-up.

Perhaps it’s only Donghyuck who can’t find any meaning in this ceremony.

To his right, Dongmyeong audibly groans in frustration as a second speaker takes a deep breath, slouching further in his seat. His twin, Dongju, echoes the sentiment with an even louder groan. Chaeyoung, to his left, tells them to, _Shut the fuck up, we’re all miserable_. For what it’s worth, Donghyuck thinks that he might be the most miserable of them all, stuck between them.

The moment that Donghyuck has his diploma in his hands; the moment that the ceremony ends, and half the students throw their caps into the air in an uncoordinated shit-show, Donghyuck is gone. He’s weaving himself through bodies, smiling politely at families of friends who greet him, ask where his parents are, and say nothing when he lies through his fucking teeth and tells them that he’s trying to find them.

He pulls his arm from Jeno’s grasp with a small apology before finding silence on the fourth floor of the library. No one will be here. No one will look for him. This was his least favorite place. A constant mantra of, _That place is fucking haunted, man_ , was the only thing he ever had to say about this place. For today, it will protect him. He’ll ignore the noises coming from outside and stay here until the sun sets and he’s forced to leave or be locked up. Not that it matters.

The key, heavy in his pocket, reminds Donghyuck that this is his place, at least temporarily, for now.

Donghyuck doesn’t know when it starts, or how it ends, but he cries. He cries until he can’t anymore, and the floor under his body starts to feel cold. Graduation is an end of something, even if it doesn’t have to be, and the symbolism of it all is overwhelming. Donghyuck doesn’t think that he’s really sad. Though, frankly speaking, Donghyuck doesn’t know what to think. Or do. Or feel. The most that he knows is that being alone is comforting.

His phone in his pocket buzzes, and he sees a plea of, _come home soon_ , a couple hundred times from Jeno. It’s the thing that pulls him off the ground, wipes the tears from his face, and forces him out of the building. Graduation isn’t for him, but it holds all the memories that Donghyuck is afraid to lose. These people, and the things he’s done here, are stationary. They will exist in this place, at those times, for as long as he exists. And then, one day, they simply _won’t_.

Time is something that Donghyuck will never feel comfortable with. He grapples with it endlessly, and it’s major, defining moments that physically represent the passage of time that send him reeling. It’s something he’s working on. Will continue working on, until it’s been years since Jeno was there to greet him at the door, arms outstretched in a comforting _welcome home_. Because this is his home. For as much as Donghyuck knows he must fall out of love with Jeno, this is his home.

He exists in the spaces between Jeno’s fingers and at the tips of his eyelashes. Donghyuck breathes life into spaces that were, at one point in time, empty. They’ll be vacant again soon enough, For Sale signs placed on the front lawns as Jeno searches for someone new to fill the position that Donghyuck thought was only meant for him.

Donghyuck is cold. The air conditioner is blasting and his regalia is still damp with sweat. Somewhere along the line, he lost his cap, fingerprints pressed into the leather of his diploma. Donghyuck is cold and he shivers and feels grateful when Jeno doesn’t say anything about the way his eyes are a bright read and his chest shakes when he inhales. Jeno has always known when to push and when to pull with him, even if he doesn’t know in the ways that Donghyuck would like him to.

“Was it nice to spend time with your parents?” Jeno asks, because Donghyuck is a liar. He’s a liar about many things, and this is just one of them. “You ran off so quickly, I figured that they had something planned. Reservations for some fancy restaurant probably, right?”

Smiling is the same as lying, and Donghyuck is good at both. “Yeah. Sorry I couldn’t stick around.”

The clock in the kitchen reads eleven. Not in the morning, but at night, and Donghyuck thinks that he wishes he didn’t have to lie so much. He wishes that he wasn’t in love with Jeno, that Jeno wasn’t staying the summer, that Donghyuck could center himself again. Jeno’s hand fits perfectly in his as he guides him to the bathroom—unzips his regalia, pries the diploma from his hands and places it on the counter, where it’ll sit forgotten for a few days.

His touch is gentle as he unbuttons Donghyuck’s shirt, untucking it with a teasing smile, gentle presses of the tips of his fingers skating across his skin as he offers a comforting kiss to the side of Donghyuck’s neck.

Donghyuck is a good liar, but Jeno is even better at prying his lies apart.

“Welcome home,” Jeno whispers.

Heartbreak. Again.

“I’m home.”

This will be—Jeno will be—his home until the summer heat reaches its apex in August, and Donghyuck is stumbling through a brand-new city. Somewhere along the way, he thinks he might be able to figure his shit out. Today, however, is not that day.

This is not how you fall out of love, Donghyuck thinks. You don’t fall out of love, sober as all hell, with your equally as sober best friend in your fucking lap. That’s just not how things work. And Donghyuck knows that. Eyes the preroll sitting on the table between unopened cans of beer as Jeno presses his lips against Donghyuck’s neck.

He bites, drawing a hiss from Donghyuck’s lips, before gently sucking on the skin. Best friends don’t fuck one another like the world is ending the next day once a week. Jaemin had told Donghyuck this was a bad idea, and Donghyuck really should’ve listened to him. Donghyuck should’ve told Jeno that, no, he can’t still live with him for the summer. It’s too late, though, settling into the second week of August, their move-out in three days.

Half-packed boxes are scattered around the apartment, and Donghyuck thinks that he’ll miss this place. There are enough memories here to last a lifetime—the sorts of memories that he sorely hopes will be wiped from his mind when he leaves.

Jeno’s hips roll, cock half-hard in his pants. His fingers are rough as they dig into the skin of Donghyuck’s bare shoulders. “ _Hyuck_ ,” he whines, pulling Donghyuck’s hand from his hip to his dick, “ _please_.”

This is _definitely_ not how you fall out of love. Donghyuck knows this. He tilts Jeno’s head and kisses him anyways. If anything, this is probably how things fall apart. This is Donghyuck’s first life, and his only life, and if it means losing his heart and his mind to the man he loves, he thinks that it’s okay. He thinks that it’s probably okay to love endlessly and without return. Donghyuck will keep the words _I love you_ tucked closely against his heart and cultivate them in the dark.

He has spent the last three months taking what he can get, being greedy where he can, and living life as he must. Donghyuck has spent these days by Jeno’s side as usual, as he is, as they are. There should be something to say for how long Donghyuck has spent loving Jeno. Instead, he holds Jeno close and allows life to continue on its fated course. In three days, Donghyuck will be in a new city, surrounded by new people.

Perhaps he will also love someone new. Jeno will find somewhere new to exist in Donghyuck’s heart, and he will finally be able to look at his best friend against without feeling guilty for never properly falling out of love.

Donghyuck has spent four years of his life with his head in the fucking clouds, his heart nailed to a wall full of holes from all the other times it was pinned up, only to fall down, taking a chunk of the material every time. There’s nothing fun or beautiful or painful about it, really. It’s something that has become a state of being for him. Something that he can’t let go of anymore.

Jeno, in his lap, bows his head, eyes shut, breathing heavy. There’s nothing beautiful about heartbreak, but there are millions of things about Jeno that are beautiful. If they were both older, if they were wiser, Donghyuck thinks that it could work—that they could make it work. They’re not older, though, and Donghyuck isn’t even twenty-two yet.

“ _Hyuck_ ,” Jeno whines.

“I’ll take care of you,” whispers Donghyuck, pushing his hair from his forehead.

When he fucks Jeno that night, he tries to convey every emotion he’s ever felt around him—love, happiness, content, sadness, and heartbreak. Donghyuck isn’t sure that Jeno knows it; that Jeno can decipher the way that Donghyuck’s touches are different tonight. He won’t understand unless Donghyuck spells it out for him, and Donghyuck should know that by now. Jeno is his best friend.

Jeno is Donghyuck’s best friend and also coincidentally the man that he’s in love with. They’re different, though. Donghyuck entered college understanding things about himself that Jeno hadn’t even thought to figure out. It’s where they fell apart, probably. Donghyuck wishes that they could’ve figured this out together, but that wasn’t the path that they were headed down.

Separation is amicable, but never painless. Donghyuck thinks that what hurt the most was the way that Jeno’s sadness had washed away so quickly as he remained in the shadows, picking up pieces that did nothing but cut open wounds that had just begun healing. But that’s what he asked for, begging that they remain friends. Their end was inevitable and Donghyuck just wanted to prolong it all.

It’s only when they’re washed up and in bed together, listening to the sounds of a party several floors above them, that conversation begins. Jeno’s arms wrap around him, first, like something of a blanket, before he’s recounting stories that Donghyuck was present for. He isn’t sure for what reason until his cheek is pressed to Donghyuck’s shoulder and he’s crying. Sadness feels foreign on Jeno’s face.

“I won’t miss this place,” whispers Jeno, “but I will miss the people.”

“Yeah.” Donghyuck uses more energy than he should need to project his voice to a volume loud enough for Jeno to hear. And even then, it’s hoarse and broken. “I will, too.”

“Why did you run away from me during graduation? We didn’t even get to take any photos together,” Jeno says. Donghyuck presses his lips together and turns onto his side, back to Jeno. “Okay.”

Pushing out a fake laugh, Donghyuck closes his eyes. What will it take him to speak the truth to Jeno? “You know how it was. Hectic and whatever.”

They sleep like that in silence, and Jeno doesn’t ask again. Donghyuck moves out two days early with Jeno still in the dark, half-awake among boxes that are only his. The sun is just rising, and Donghyuck is already gone without a word, his key abandoned next to Jeno’s. He doesn’t leave room for an _I’m sorry_ or for an _I’ll see you later_ , because Donghyuck is sorry, but he won’t see Jeno later.

Even if this isn’t _the_ way, Donghyuck tells himself that this is the way _he_ will fall out of love. It will hurt, and it may take far longer than it needs to. His options have become limited.

“Welcome,” Yukhei says, “to my humble abode.”

Donghyuck stares at the empty delivery pizza box and half-full bottles of beer that little the living room, and decides that this, for now, will work. He’s hundreds of thousands of miles away from home now, about to settle into a city that doesn’t welcome him the way another might. His roommate, at least, is bright among the things that threaten to push Donghyuck away. Yukhei is something close to sunshine, and he thinks that Jaemin would probably point out their similarities while Mark would be quick to point out their differences.

This is a new place, though, with new people, and Donghyuck must learn to pull them from his memory and place them somewhere else. Taking the key Yukhei holds out for him, Donghyuck smiles. “Thanks. And thanks for letting me room with you without much issue. I promise I won’t be a pain in your ass.”

“I’m honestly not really home all that much,” Yukhei kicks a basketball out of the way, “and when I am, I’m exhausted out of my fucking mind. So, you don’t have to worry about that all that much. I sleep like a fucking rock, too.”

“So you said,” replies Donghyuck with a small laugh. It’s the polite sort, and Yukhei raises an eyebrow in place of a question. “Sorry. Exhausted. You know how it is.”

“Tomorrow I can take you on a tour of the area, if you’d like, and then we can figure out the lines you’ll need to take in order to get to Columbia from here. That okay?” He’s pulling things out of the refrigerator as he speaks, voice raising to be heard over it all. Donghyuck nods silently as Yukhei turns to him, a smile pressed thin on his face. “You don’t have to be a stranger. Go set your stuff in your room. I didn’t want to touch anything, so I just put your boxes in the room. I hope that’s okay.”

It’s more than Yukhei needed to do for him, and Donghyuck tells him such over his shoulder as he pushes the door open. The room is small, but there’s a window where the evening light streams in. This is a new place, and a new life. New people and new things. Everything is new, and Donghyuck figures that it’s only natural for him to seek and search for familiarity in such a situation.

There is no Jeno, or Jaemin, or Mark, or Renjun, or Chenle, or Jisung here to ground him. Donghyuck must relearn standing on his own again.

The reality of the situation—of everything—doesn’t actually hit him until he’s four days into living in the city, alone in the middle of the night, and he realizes that he misses them. University comforted him in a way he didn’t really expect. Or, he didn’t realize until now. That’s what Donghyuck thinks, at least. The reality is probably something closer to complacency or routine. University is all he knew. There was no need for anything else. Perhaps this is why he cried. His body knew before his mind did.

Jeno’s contact stares at him on his phone screen. Donghyuck knows that there are hundreds of messages waiting for him, unopened. This isn’t the right way to go about any of this, but they didn’t start down the correct path, either. It would be wrong for Donghyuck to reach out now, probably. Nothing was ever wrong for them, though nothing was ever right. Life is weird, Donghyuck has decided.

He misses Jeno, though. Donghyuck misses Jeno more than he misses normalcy and consistency and happiness. In every memory that he wants to remember, lives Jeno. Whether at the center or the periphery, Donghyuck guesses that, in a way, it’s always been him. Even when Jeno wasn’t in his life, it was him. Donghyuck can learn to live without Jeno, but he isn’t sure that he _wants_ to.

A knocking at his door breaks him from his thoughts. Yukhei’s outfit is ridiculous, to put it nicely. He almost glows in the nonexistent light in Donghyuck’s bedroom. The fluorescent yellow of his shirt causes him to squint as he looks up. Yukhei is a distraction, but a nice kind.

“Hey.”

“Hi?”

Yukhei jabs his thumb over his shoulder. “The guys and I are gonna go out for a few drinks. Do you wanna come?”

He glances at his phone one last time before pushing himself off his bed. “Sure,” Donghyuck mumbles, “why the fuck not?”

“That’s the spirit!” Yukhei’s laugh is loud, and Donghyuck wonders if it’ll be big enough to fill the holes left over from his own mistakes. “Your drinks tonight are on me, okay?”

“Now don’t say that,” Donghyuck shrugs on a jacket, smoothing the sleeves out with his palms before looking up at Yukhei whose gaze is full of pity and empathy. He doesn’t want that from him. Not today, not ever. “You don’t know how much I can drink.”

Hands up, palms out, he shakes his head. “Please don’t drink me out of house and home. I’m a PhD candidate, not a millionaire. Sadly, there’s a huge difference between my income and that of someone who’s made of money.”

Donghyuck thinks that Yukhei could be a step towards figuring things out. Life is different now, though. He’s tired of using people—of sprinting to keep up with Jeno, pretending that he’s still the same. For now, he’ll grow up and hopefully grow out.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” mutters Donghyuck under his breath.

This is a city, which is a place, and Jeno is a person, which is a _thing_. These are categories that are simple enough for Donghyuck to organize in his mind. It becomes harder the more he tries to define them. This is a city, which is a place, which is his home. Jeno is a person, which is a _thing_ , but more specifically he is _Donghyuck’s_ thing. Jeno is Donghyuck’s memory. He exists in limited space, now, crowded so tightly that there is no longer any room to grow.

Donghyuck doesn’t even pretend to read his messages anymore, not that he really gets any. Their chat is muted, but there’s nothing new. This is the path that Donghyuck has embarked down, and he will live with the consequences. Every single day he steps closer to becoming someone new. Every single day Jeno’s space in his heart becomes smaller and smaller.

Routine helps. An early morning, a walk to campus, an internship, a part-time job. Things that overwhelm him and force him to compartmentalize and deal with things in an organized fashion. Jaemin calls it apathetic, Renjun calls it unhealthy, Donghyuck calls it _surviving_. Because that’s the most he can do in this situation. They’ve all been put between a rock and a hard place.

Sometimes they slip—they mention Jeno, how he’s doing, what he’s up to—and Donghyuck, as time passes, finds that he doesn’t mind as much anymore. Jeno stopped loving him, and Donghyuck is finding his way towards that state of mind on his own. There were better ways, but Donghyuck is young and he’s reckless, and this was _his way_ , and he’s always been predisposed to take control of what he can.

One year passed, and then two, and Donghyuck is facing yet another graduation with his shoulders squared, though this one doesn’t hurt as bad. There are less memories, less attachment, and more sense to the world than there used to be. Another move looms, another new city, another adjustment period. Life, once it begins to move on its own, is an unstoppable force that doesn’t allow for faltering. It takes everything in Donghyuck to keep up, but he doesn’t find that he minds.

Not yet, anyways. In the future he will, when he’s tired, and his methods no longer work. When things become so monotonous that a stumble is easy to recover from—so easy, in fact, that he’ll take longer than he can. Comfort, he knows, is dangerous, but he’s settled into a rhythm, even as he and Yukhei moved into a different apartment in the city, Dejun and Kunhang joining them along the way.

“I knew you, sort of,” Dejun explains one night, leaned over a bowl of soup placed precariously on a textbook. It looks expensive, and rented, and Donghyuck wonders if that’s what it truly looks like to live on the edge. “Yangyang Liu—yeah, _that_ Yangyang—and I grew up in the same town. He’s a fucking pain in the ass.”

“Yeah, he is,” Donghyuck agrees. “That’s why he’s great.”

“I figured you’d get it.” Dejun falls silent before he grins this big sort of smile that puts Donghyuck at ease. “He asked about you the other day,” Dejun says. His sentence, his story, hangs in the air unfinished for a moment before he continues. It’s a pause of purpose. “He was asking about you the other day. Said that you’d fallen off the face of the earth a couple months ago.”

Biting his bottom lip, Donghyuck nods. It’s true. There’s something that pulled him away from reality, and he’s come to the realization that it’s a byproduct of keeping his head above water. Something, in order to survive, had to give, and in the end, it became distance. Under the strain, bridges began to age and crumble. They still stand, albeit weak, and Donghyuck can’t find the strength to rebuild them. It’s coming back to him, slowly.

Part of him hopes it’s not too late. Another part of him wonders if it’ll be easier to just let them collapse under the weight. He won’t let them, though. He’ll fix them until he can’t. Donghyuck is patient and gentle and has found time to reflect on why his time in university was so delicate, why his mind refuses to let it go.

If they wish to break the bridges, then Donghyuck will allow it. But if there’s a chance to salvage them, he will chase after it and work for it.

He knows where to begin.

“Well, you know how life is,” Donghyuck says with a bitter smile. “Sometimes things just get away from us.”

Hundreds—no, probably thousands, at this point—of messages have been sent. In the end, Jeno felt alone, blindsided, and shattered. And then, slowly but surely, he began to pick the pieces back up and move forward. It’s not like there was anything else he could do, really. Donghyuck had made his decision, without Jeno, seventeen steps ahead and out of reach.

That is why he is here, in a small city.

It was something unbearable, being looked at with pity, nursing a broken heart, shuttering everyone out. Over days, months, years, Jeno has relearned what it means to be a person, in pieces and as a whole. They’re unavoidable, though, the moments here and there where Jeno’s mind is given the opportunity to wonder where Donghyuck is, what he’s doing, how he is. These moments are unavoidable, but Jeno finds that they come through less and less and less until months pass and Jeno has not thought of Donghyuck once.

That is why he is here, in a small city.

This city is, in a way, his now. Here is where he will allow his new self, his improved self, to continue to grow and thrive, unbridled and uninhibited. That is what he tells himself, at least. It is just reality that, in the end, everything comes back to Donghyuck. Jeno is different now, though, and he can look at Donghyuck differently—reflect on their memories critically and realize that they, together, tore themselves down until there were only scraps to put back together.

He knows things are different when he sees Donghyuck outside of a café and thinks, _It’s been a while_. Not, _I’ve missed you so much that sometimes it hurt to breathe_ , or, _Where have you been?_ After all, this isn’t _his_ Donghyuck that stands in front of him, so there’s no use in saying _I miss you_ when this isn’t the person that Jeno has been thinking about.

There’s a small little, “ _Oh_ ,” followed by a, “ _Hello_ ,” from Donghyuck, though it doesn’t sound like him and, for a moment, Jeno considers continuing on his way.

And yet maybe— _maybe_ —a brand new start wouldn’t hurt.

Jeno raises a hand with a smile and says, “Hey.”

**Author's Note:**

> haha see you in part 4 gtg


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